War VI - A Roaring Lion’s Strategy over Man - War: Satan, Demons & the Fourth Dimension

It's time now for the rope with Patrick Depot.

I have felt a change in the red since I hit on this one.

There is a marked spiritual change in the atmosphere.

We don't want to deal with it.

We don't want to think about it because it's scary.

And remember what happened.

God wants to bring the Bible.

God wants to bring the power of shame down.

Welcome to another edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Steve is the head pastor of The Road in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

It's our vision to make wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ and to see you grow in the grace and knowledge of his love.

If you're in the area, we welcome you to come out and join us for our Saturday night service beginning at 6 p.m.

We meet at Chapel Hills Church, located at 2025 Harleman Drive, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80920.

On this edition of the road, we'll continue this exciting study on spiritual warfare.

Here now with today's message is Pastor Steve.

Tonight, we're talking about war.

This is the fifth in our study on war, and I'm calling this a roaring lion strategy for men.

Now, when I say men, I mean that generically.

I don't mean the gender specific people.

A roaring lion strategy for men.

But I want to start with what I think are three positions of spiritual warfare that I've learned over the years in the church that continually come up in evangelical to mainline to independent to charismatic to Pentecostal churches.

There's really three positions on spiritual warfare.

The first is that there's a demon behind every bush.

And it's this idea like everything is the devil's fault, and demons are everywhere, and demons are just doing stuff all the time, and it's and they just give way too much credit to demons.

Now, when I was going to seminary in the 90s, this was really prevalent in the charismatic churches.

And I was part of a charismatic church, but um but we weren't part of that particular stream, but there was a stream called SLSW.

SLSW means strategic level spiritual warfare.

And I don't know how in the world, sometimes I don't know how I get mixed up in things.

But I guess because I was the resident theologue in this denomination that we were part of, I got asked to frame all these letters between, I mean, bigwigs.

And then I would sign another guy's name.

So I would write it for this guy.

He was probably one of the leading pastors in the United States.

So I'd write it for him, and then he would sign it, and then he would send it to this other guy, and then that guy would respond, and it was this running dialogue.

But here's the basic gist of it, and it's important to understand this a little bit.

It's not really a big issue now.

I don't think it is.

Not any circles I'm running around with anymore.

But it was the idea that there's territorial spirits.

I believe in territorial spirits.

So in Daniel chapter 10, there is a prince of Persia and a prince of Greece.

Daniel 10 · chapter mention

There is a prince, there is a demonic spirit over Colorado Springs.

There's no doubt about it.

There's a demonic spirit over the United States of America.

There's demonic spirits over countries.

I believe there's demonic spirits over churches.

The problem with SLSW was how do you deal with it?

And so there were of the most radical and bold a belief that you take on those spirits in prayer and pull them down and revival will come.

The problem is you end up praying to demons.

And folks, I can't find any place in Scripture where you pray to demons.

What we see in the book of Acts, and what we see in the New Testament, is we see a church preaching the gospel, healing the sick, casting out demons on what I would call more on an earthly plane, which we're going to call around here, more of a land-based attack.

So almost every week since we started the series on war, someone has come forward and we've had to deal with a demonic presence and cast that demon out.

That is what I would call ground warfare.

Ground warfare.

Jesus did it, and you guys are all here if you're spirit-filled, but if you're spirit-filled believers, not just believers, but if you're walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, God can use you that way.

You've got the power through the Spirit of God to do that.

We'll talk about that in the weeks to come on how to minister in that.

But we pray to God, don't we?

We pray to Jesus, we worship Jesus, and we let the devil be God's devil.

And when we pray, he does stuff.

So, for example, as we talked about a few weeks ago with Daniel, Daniel didn't even know there was a prince of Persia.

He didn't even know there was a prince of Greece.

He was simply crying out to God and fasting in prayer for 21 days, and then the archangel Michael came to him and told him that he had contended with that spirit.

So that was a work in the fourth dimension that Daniel wasn't even aware of.

So first is an over-emphasis, okay, over-emphasis on the demonic.

The second is complete negligence to have anything to do with spiritual warfare or satanic and demonic stuff.

And it's like there's a demon behind no bushes.

And so, and so it's this idea that, oh yeah, it's in the Bible, and every once in a while the missionaries come home and do slideshows.

And they see guys with bones in their noses and everything, and the and the missionary's got his pith helmet, and it's okay over there.

But this is America.

We have baseball and we have apple pie and we have, I mean, our biggest issue is is Tom Brady and deflate the football controversy.

You know, deflate gate.

That's a big mistake.

And I believe if we could see into the fourth-dimensional world, we'd probably find out there's a lot of people that could be set free in our mental hospitals.

A lot of people that could be set free of depression.

A lot of divorces wouldn't have happened, and a lot of issues that people struggle with wouldn't be there if we knew how to handle the demonic, because we'd be surprised how many times they are behind what's going on.

So I hold to the third position.

And the third position is what I'll call study and stand.

Study and stand.

And that's based off Ephesians 6.10.

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, in the power of his might, put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

That means the strategies of the devil.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

So we are commanded to stand.

In 1 Peter 5 8, which we just read, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

And my reality check was the first time I encountered this, was with a young man with Campus Crusade for Christ in Tokyo, Japan, who was struggling with suicidal thoughts and struggling with depression.

And I had been reading all these books about the demonic, and so I just thought, well, I got a, you know, I got a real specimen right here in front of me.

And so one day he came over and I said, you know, this could be a demonic thing.

And he's what's that?

You know, so I explained the demonic.

And then I was very astute and very qualified and anointed to say, if there's a demon here, I command you in the name of Jesus to manifest yourself.

There's a word for people who do things like that.

And it starts with an I and it ends with a T.

And so for the next three hours, this guy tore up our living room.

And I and I definitely have never been the sharpest pencil in the drawer.

There's no doubt about that.

But one thing you can say about Steve Holt is I do not quit.

And so I did not cast out that demon.

I wore it down.

I just wore it down.

And finally they left.

And he was set free.

He had had epilepsy since he was about three years old and he was healed.

He never had epilepsy again.

Um, and his life was radically changed.

Satan has a strategy, you guys.

He has a strategy to take you out, and I think more importantly, with believers, he has a strategy to make you inoperative.

He works in your mind, he works in your heart, he works through belief systems.

Some of you have agreements that you've had since childhood that are so familiar to you that they're just normal.

Yeah, that's just the way it is.

Everybody has that, right?

And we call those familiar spirits, and we'll cover that in the next few weeks, what a familiar spirit is.

I'm not going to cover it tonight.

But it is this work of the enemy, often in childhood, often when we're we're having our formative belief systems developed, that the enemy comes and tells you things and creates lies, and you start making agreements with that.

Those agreements are things like I'll never trust, I'll never do this or that, I'll never, those I'll nevers, or I will always.

And it's very normal, and I think it's not necessarily sinful because in our in our battle that we, the world that we live in, we have a culture that opposes our faith.

We have the demonic and satanic that opposes our faith.

And then we have human nature.

What we're going to see tonight is that Satan thought he got Adam and Eve to be his slaves.

And some writers even say that today.

I don't think that's true.

It went from one will in the universe, God's, to two wills when Satan, Lucifer rebelled, to seven billion wills.

There's about 7.1 billion wills in the world today.

And what Satan thought he got, I think it even turned on him because we hate Satan, Satan hates us, God hates Satan, Satan hates God.

And so it's a mess.

And so within that, we have a will of our own that allows strongholds to be built up in our lives.

And it all started in Genesis.

So turning your Bibles to Genesis.

We looked already at Genesis 1 and 2.

God came, He breathed his life into Adam, he formed Eve, he made them male and female.

And the first command in Scripture, men and women, is to be fruitful and multiply.

You're commanded by God to be fruitful and multiply.

It is the seminal command in Scripture to humankind that you are to be fruitful and multiply.

That desire within you to multiply, that desire within you to be successful, that's a God thing.

It's not a bad thing, that's a good thing.

That's a God thing.

God made man to be fruitful and multiply, and he gave him the garden.

So before sin had come, before the serpent had come on the scene, they were given a garden.

And he said, Tend it, take care of it, be fruitful and multiply.

And we know he didn't just mean procreation because he said, All the animals you will have dominion over.

And so God created each one of us to be co-heirs and co-regents over the earth.

You have authority, beautiful authority within you.

That when we get filled with the Holy Spirit, when you come to know Christ, and then you get filled with the Holy Spirit, you're a new creation in Christ.

And it's true.

The old is passed away, it's broken.

You are set free from that old life into this new life to be a co-regent, a co-conspirator of the kingdom of God, with God as your partner and your power and your best friend.

And then Satan comes upon the scene in Genesis chapter 3, and he used three strategies.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

First of all, he causes us to question God's goodness and love.

At the very core of what the enemy does in our lives, he wants you to question his goodness and love.

I remember that feeling when I first came to know Christ.

I was a freshman in college, and this guy shared the gospel with me.

And I remember thinking, where'd this come from?

I'd never even met a missionary.

I had never met a missionary.

And I remember thinking, if I get saved, I'm going to have to be a missionary to Africa.

Now I became a missionary to Japan, but um but I remember thinking, like, I don't want, oh you know, and so immediately I'm I'm already questioning God's goodness and love.

He's gonna make me go do something, and I'm gonna marry some ugly chick.

I remember thinking that it's like all the Christians that, I mean, real Christians, I mean, not the ones I, not in the church I'd hung out with, I already knew they weren't believers.

I mean, we were we all went through baptism and confirmation together, but I'm looking around and going, there ain't no way.

Okay.

But the ones I'd met that were really into it, they were just, they were weird, they were ugly, they were, oh, you know.

And so I just thought, man, you know, no more fraternity parties, you know.

So right there, anybody know what I'm talking about?

You know, nod your head if you didn't rest of your lives.

You know you do.

Okay, number two, he causes us to question God's word and his promises.

He causes us to question God's word and promises.

You know, the struggle in the Bible throughout the last hundred years has been Genesis and Revelation.

That's where the theologs have had their battleground about the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture.

Is because Genesis is about origins, gender, sexuality, purposes, revelations about destiny, about who wins.

And if you were Satan, wouldn't you go after the beginning and the end, and then you can cut it all up in the middle?

And that's exactly what he's done.

So he talked about questioning God's word and his promise.

And thirdly, he tempts us with independence.

You can be like God.

You can do your own thing.

You don't have to depend on God, you're your own man.

And so men fell.

So look at Genesis 3:5, and we're going to pick it up there.

Genesis 3:5

For God knows that in the day you eat of it, meaning this fruit, this knowledge of good and evil, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So man's sin is of the same nature as Satan's sin, a direct rebellion against God and God's authority over us.

Satan's declaration of independence becomes man's declaration of independence that you can be like God.

You can have insight into the world and into your soul like God does.

And so the battle in all of our temptations is independence from anyone.

It's the biggest struggle of many of our lives in the area of authority.

Isaiah 53 says, all we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way.

So see, Satan thought he was getting a slave from Eve, and then indirectly a slave out of Adam, and what he did is he created two more wills that didn't want to deal with Satan either.

Because all of us have gone astray after our own way.

Why do I say that?

Because it's not true that the devil makes us do everything.

We have a will.

So don't misinterpret what I'm saying here.

Demons are not telling us to do all these bad things all the time.

We do a really good job just on our own.

And so we have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way.

And so I think of it as like a triangle.

And so God, Satan, man, and there's this enmity between Satan and God.

There's enmity between Satan and man.

There's enmity between man and God.

There's enmity between man and Satan.

Enmity.

Strife.

Envy, jealousy.

It's at the very core of who we are.

That's really important tonight.

Because if we don't grasp that, then we miss the point of Calvary.

We miss the point of why God had to recreate man in his perfect state.

And his name was Jesus Christ.

He had to come and retake the earth to show us a way to break the enity between us and God.

The English poet William Ernest Henley captures Adam's independence from God.

And here's what's interesting for all of us of the male gender here.

There's no place in the New Testament where the blame for what happened in Genesis 3 is laid on Eve.

It's always laid at the feet of Adam.

In the famous poem Invictus, the fool English poet, William Ernest Henley, writes these words.

Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be, for I have an unconquerable soul.

It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll.

I am master of my fate.

I am captain of my soul.

Great poem written by a poetic fool.

Psalm 14, 1 says, there the man is a fool who says, There is no God.

For the poet William Ernest Henley, he is his own God.

And to turn from our independence from God and to surrender ourselves to Jesus Christ.

Verse 6.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and she ate.

So the enticement to rebellion is always through the eyes.

We think with our eyes, the enticement of the eyes.

And so Eve is enticed by what she sees, and the scriptures say it is the orifice of the soul.

I had the privilege coming here tonight to stop at Panera with my little daughter.

And I needed to do some more work on this, so I was just reading, and she's got we both have our green teeth.

And I'm looking at her, and when she is about this far away, her eyes to me look brown.

But when she's back a little further, because she would sit back in her seat like this, and then they look green.

And she said it was the other way around.

She said, Dad, when you're up close, they're green, and when you look back, they're brown.

And I said, Well, to me, when you're up close, they're brown, but when you look back, it looks green.

I said, But you got beautiful eyes, honey.

You see, we see into a person's soul through their eyes.

And the enemy's been using the eyes for thousands of years to get into our soul.

And then she gave to her husband and he ate.

I think demonization.

Which we're going to get into in the next few weeks usually happens in a group.

I don't know how many of you smoked pot here.

It's legal now, so you know, some of you may still be smoking pot.

I don't know.

But pot smoking is never done alone.

At least that's what I remember.

I mean, I never walked out, you know, behind the school, and there's one guy with weed.

He's always got buddies around him.

And most people don't shoot up except with a group.

Most people don't skip school with, but with a buddy.

And most people don't cheat on tests except with some other guys that are involved in it.

Sin just kind of congregates.

So the first thing Eve does is, hey, Adam, check it out.

And it groups up.

By the way, demons do the same thing.

We'll talk about this.

The way demons work is through fleshly sins, most of the time.

Envy, strife, jealousy, gossip, lust.

We all have times where we struggle with those.

But if we don't confess them and give them to the Lord, then they fester.

There's demonic spirits that come in and lock in.

And then what happens is they start to build a stronghold there.

And so when you get into the demonic world and you're having to deal with a demonic situation, it's usually more than one.

They gang up too.

And so Eve pulls Adam in.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

This is really important.

Please don't miss this.

Shame.

Shame is at the very core of the first consequence of sin.

And it's usually sexual.

The fig leaf didn't cover the guy's bicep.

The fig leaf wasn't a hairdo issue.

The fig leaf wasn't zitz.

Oh, I've got bumps.

Oh, I I've got an acne.

Oh, I'm breaking out.

No, it was over sexual organ.

And so shame's at the core of our identity.

And that's why sexual abuse can be so devastating in a man or woman's life.

And it's so hard to get over because, and that's why this gender issue with all that's happening in our country right now is is so it's such a big, it's way bigger.

Guys, you know that?

It's a way, way, way bigger, deeper issue than some former Olympian who's now a gal.

One of the psychologists at Harvard, it's either Harvard or Yale, recently read a study that 65% of those who have gender changes commit suicide.

Because it doesn't solve the deeper problems of their life.

Because at the very core is shame through the sexuality that comes, through the identity that's been broken because of the broken intimacy.

And so Eve and Adam begin to cover up their shame.

And shame could be defined as if you really knew this about me, you would not want a connectivity.

You would not want to have a relationship with me anymore.

That's really what shame is.

Shame is saying if you knew this about me, you wouldn't want to have a relationship with me.

Because at the very core of who we are is connection.

It's the most important thing in our life.

Connection.

Connection with God and connection with people.

And so suddenly Adam and Eve are dealing with shame.

Every one of us in this room, we're dealing in some way, shape, or form with shame.

Brene Brown and her masterful work on vulnerability on the TED Talk that's the leading TED Talk.

I think 20 million hits right now, the last time I checked, said that everybody struggles with shame.

Shame is the fear of disconnection.

And so at the very core, the enemy uses shame and this fear of disconnection.

And so Adam and Eve don't know what to do with their own relationship with each other, much less God.

God's not in the picture yet.

This is just Adam and Eve together covering up.

And I hope and pray that as we go through this study, God's going to reveal shame areas that He wants to heal in our lives.

In Brene Brown's work, over 10 years of studying shame, she said there's one thing.

There's really just one thing that separates those who seem to start to break out of the power of shame and come into connective, loving relationships, and those who can't, and it's vulnerability.

It's opening up about our shame.

So Satan comes in, and this is the power of shame to come in and break relationships.

Religion can bring shame.

Some of you come out of backgrounds where you've been shamed through religion.

And tonight, probably something's coming up in some of us.

I have felt a change in the room since I hit on this one point.

But there is a marked spiritual change in the atmosphere in this room.

We don't want to deal with it.

We don't want to think about it because it's scary.

And remember what happened.

God wants to bring revival.

God wants to bring the power of shame down through his Holy Spirit.

So he comes, and this is how he comes to Adam and Eve.

Because here's what shame does.

Shame breaks off the ability to be authentic and real.

Because we're fearful.

We're fearful of what people will think if they knew that about us, and so we can't be authentic and real.

So we become, as Christians, we become religious.

Okay?

And we know all the talk after a while.

And what we're doing is we're half-hearted because our whole heart can't be engaged because half of our heart is still wrapped up in shame.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

And the Lord called to Adam and said to him, Where are you?

So he said, I heard your voice in the garden.

I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

Shame breeds fear.

Not the fear of God that's a good kind of fear.

See, see, there's a fear of God that's a good kind of fear.

It's a fear of sin, and it's a desire to be where God wants us to be.

We fear being out of God's will.

It's good fear.

But this is a fear of running from God and the fear of, listen to this, don't miss this, the fear of the presence of God.

The fear of the presence of God.

Because the presence of God reveals stuff.

Some of us here tonight, you have a fear of being here because you've been in the presence of God before and it's scary to you.

It's scary to what it might reveal.

It's fearful to realize that maybe our sin is going to be found out.

And we have a God of love who wants to embrace your heart.

And every one of us has been there.

Every one of us has struggled with that.

Fear.

I think the greatest fear over men, and I'm speaking male gender over men, is do I have what it takes?

That's our greatest fear as a man is do I have what it takes?

And fear grips our hearts.

So shame leads to fear.

And he said, Who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?

Verse 12.

The man said, The woman, some things never change.

The woman whom you gave to be with me.

So even it's like you gave her to me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.

Doesn't end there.

And the Lord God said to the woman, What is this you have done?

And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.

So shame leads to fear, and fear leads to blame.

Blame is the result of shame and fear.

We blame because if we don't, we will be exposed, which is shame.

If we don't blame, we'll be accountable, which we fear.

You see the vicious cycle of Satan?

So we blame, which is the result of shame and fear, and we blame because if we don't, we'll be exposed, which is shame, and if we don't blame, we will be accountable, which we fear, and that's how it keeps going on.

H.G.

Wells, the great playwright, once said, with what we see across the world, we're forced to conclude either that God has the power and does not care, or that God cares and does not have the power.

And men and women, what the scriptures say is that God cares and he does have the power, but he's also got a timing.

And so what does it say in Scripture?

In the fullness of time, Christ came.

In the fullness of time, Christ came.

And so he gave us the law and he built in this built-in system of failure called the Ten Commandments.

And so we tried to follow the law and we failed.

And in failing, God set us up for grace.

And so God, in his infinite mercy and his infinite wisdom, church, he had to take a perfect man.

He had to recreate man in the image of God, in the image of man, fully man and fully God.

In his name, this new man was Jesus, perfect in every way.

A man whom Satan could find nothing in.

A man who lived a sinless life.

A man who lived a life we could not live and died a death we could not die.

To give us a life that we can only live through him.

To break the power of Satan and the power of sin and the power of the demonic, that perfect man who so loved the world.

Jesus Christ.

Romans 5 says this.

But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Much more than, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Men and women, we can be reconciled to Christ.

We can be reconciled to him, not just in salvation, but in what we call sanctification.

Through a personal, vital, dynamic, growing relationship with Jesus Christ, we begin to give him our shame.

We begin to give him our blame.

We begin to give him our fears.

Now I don't know what this means, and if anybody's got insight into it, please email me this week.

But I had a dream last night.

I don't know what you call them.

They're little sporting caps from the 1920s, 1930s.

I've never worn, I don't even like those hats.

But in the dream, I'm wearing this hat and I took it off and there was a serpent inside it.

I shared this with the men before the service to ask for prayer.

Is it a stronghold of the enemy over my mind?

I don't know.

I don't know what it means.

You know, hats can often represent a mantle of leadership, a covering.

So God's doing stuff in our lives, all of our lives.

He wants to reveal stuff.

Romans 5 continues.

And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned, for the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation.

That's what the enemy wants to do, it's condemnation.

That's what religion does, it's condemnation.

But the free gift which came from the many offenses resulted in justification.

For if by the one man's offense, that's Adam, reign through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.

You are justified.

You are set free.

Those principles and those legal condemnatory words were nailed at the cross at Calvary, and they are dead and gone, and you are free in Christ.

And the enemy comes and he says, That's not true.

No, that's not true.

If you only knew this, if you only knew that, that's the enemy.

The Lord comes and he says, It was for freedom that Christ has set us free.

Therefore, no longer be under a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5, 1 and 2.

I want that.

You want that.

It's why you're here.

It's why you signed up.

It's why you changed jerseys at some point in your life.

And you got on God's team.

The name on the back is the same, but the emblem on the front is different.

You are washed in the blood of the Lamb.

You are a new creation in Christ.

And Christ did everything that you keep trying to do yourself.

And I say tonight, surrender.

Surrender, surrender, surrender to Christ.

Take it to Him and let the finished and completed work of Calvary take over.

You've been listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We pray that you've been blessed by the message today.

Our hope is to make wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

And that's why we teach the Word of God verse by verse, scripture by scripture, and precept upon precept.

We're excited about all the things God is doing in the lives of our faithful listeners.

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We'd love to be able to pray for you as you encounter difficult times.

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Again, the address is The Road.

PO Box 88485 Colorado Springs, Colorado 80908.

If you're in the area, please stop on by and join us at The Road for our Saturday night service at 6 p.m.

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